Document exchange is an integral part of modern computing. In fact, some of the earliest incarnations of the Internet were built to exchange scholarly work between scientists and researchers. Users may typically view and work with documents on different computers and devices. For example, a user may work on a document on a home computer and then continue working on the document on his or her office computer. Another scenario may involve one user working on a document in his or her office and sending that document for review by other users on different computers. With the advancements made in networking availability, the most efficient way, in general, to accomplish these tasks has been to electronically transfer the document, as opposed to transferring the hardware, on which the document resides, from one computer or device to another or saving the document to disk and then transferring the disk to the other computer.
Because everyone does not operate the same type of computer, electronically transferred documents may be viewed on various different computing platforms. For instance, in the example above, the user working on the document at home maybe using a computer running a MACINTOSH® platform, available from Apple Inc., while the user's computer in his or her office maybe running a WINDOWS® platform available from Microsoft Corporation. Perhaps even more common is the situation in which a user views and edits a document on a personal computer and then views the document on a personal digital assistant (“PDA”), cell phone, or other wireless device, such as Research in Motion Ltd.'s BLACKBERRY® device.
Exchanging documents quickly and efficiently is generally important to a successful business and is desirable even in non-business environments. There are several methods used to exchange documents today. Perhaps the most common is the near ubiquitous email system. A user who works at home may simply email the document to another user. The other user would then open the document on his or her computer using the appropriate program. Another common method of exchanging documents is to use a Universal Serial Bus (USB) flash storage drive, which is comparable to a modern day floppy disk. These devices plug into an USB port on a computer. When the USB storage drive is plugged into the computer, the user may save the document on the USB storage drive. The USB drive can then be removed and plugged into another computer. The document can then be downloaded from the USB storage drive onto the second computer.
There are also various document management systems (DMS) that allow uses to log in to a system either locally or remotely in order to access, edit, and save documents in the DMS system. For example, a large business may include a business-wide DMS system that workers log into when local to the working facility. When these workers are remote from the working facility, they may typically access the business-wide DMS system through a direct dial in, a virtual private network (VPN), internet or web access sites, and the like. When logged in remotely, these remote workers will have the same access to documents that are on the business-wide DMS system. Thus, the system documents may be exchanged with the remote computers that the workers use to access the DMS system.
Bar codes and other types of machine readable codes may also be used to create intelligent documents. Intelligent documents have bar codes or other machine readable codes imprinted on them. The machine readable codes are often encrypted to enhance security. When the codes are scanned or read, a location pointer reveals the location of the document or information about the document. Other information may also be included, such as the author and date of the document. All this information may be retrieved by scanning the machine readable code.